Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 25.3 (Fall 2011)

Samuel Scheffler's focus throughout his philosophical
career has been on tensions
between the powerful reasons for action
one has that are generated by one's own
projects, ambitions, and relationships—the
core of a flourishing life—and the no less
powerful reasons one has that are generated
by others' projects, ambitions, and relationships.
These are tensions that, in different ways, have also been a key theme in the work of Thomas Nagel and Bernard
Williams, two philosophers whose influence
on Scheffler is clear. As his latest collection
of essays demonstrates, however, Scheffler's
own thinking on the subject is both distinctive
and distinctively valuable.

One notable feature of Scheffler's treatment
of these tensions is his vision of the
political as the locus of their resolution.
This is most explicitly articulated in the
collection's fourth essay, "The Division of
Moral Labor: Egalitarian Liberalism as
Moral Pluralism," in which Scheffler argues
that egalitarian liberalism should be understood
as "an acknowledgment of, and a
strategy for accommodating, the diversity
of our values" (p. 127). The idea is to
assign the task of realizing values of justice
and equality—values associated with the
second set of reasons noted above—to
society's basic structure; that is, the way
its major institutions distribute benefits
and burdens. When the basic structure is
doing its job properly, it secures what
Rawls calls "background justice," which
enables individuals to face each other
secure in the knowledge that the system
of social cooperation that each upholds
treats them all fairly. This leaves individuals
free "to lead their lives in such a way
as to honor the values appropriate to
small-scale interpersonal relationships"
(p. 113) without thereby compromising
their commitment to justice and equality.

As Scheffler goes on to explain
in "Cosmopolitanism, Justice, and
Institutions"—an essay that will be of particular
interest to readers of Ethics &
International Affairs—the need for this
division of labor between institutions and
individuals arises as a result of a "modern
predicament" (p. 170): the insufficiency of
compliance with any feasible rules of
personal conduct alone to guarantee,
against the complex institutional background
of a modern society, the fairness
of the system of cooperation in which we
are participants. Rawls's focus on the
basic structure, which was novel when he
wrote A Theory of Justice, can be viewed
in part as a response to that modern
predicament.

This has implications for contemporary
debates about global justice. One important group of contributors to these debates are
the cosmopolitans who take Rawls to
have been mistaken, in view of the existence
of global institutions and cooperative
enterprises, to restrict the application of
his two principles of justice to the basic
structure of the state. These cosmopolitans,
Scheffler argues, must do more than point
to the existence of global institutions and
enterprises in order to show that Rawls's
principles (or some global analogue)
ought to be applied globally. They must
show that global institutions and enterprises
give rise to a similar predicament,
and moreover that the problem posed by
this predicament "could not be solved
either by individual agents or by the basic
structure of individual societies even if
both complied fully with the respective
norms that apply to them" (p. 170). It is
not obvious that cosmopolitans can show
this.

As Scheffler goes on to suggest, however,
neither is it obvious that the new social and
institutional forms and practices that have
arisen in the current era of globalization
do not give rise to predicaments that
necessitate "changes in our repertoire of
moral principles" (p. 172). Rawls's arguments
for the basic structure as the primary
subject of justice, then, may give us reason
to think that the scope of application of the
two principles of justice should be
restricted. But at the same time they prepare
us for the possibility that new moral
principles—even principles of distributive
justice—may be necessary as a response
to increased global integration. Scheffler's
discussion here, as throughout Equality
and Tradition, is characteristically balanced
and insightful and deserves to be widely
read.

Other essays in the collection—including
"Is the Basic Structure Basic?," Scheffler's excellent discussion of G. A. Cohen's
"incentives" critique of Rawls—further
articulate Scheffler's idea of the political
as the locus for the resolution of the tensions
that arise between the two sets of
reasons described above. But Scheffler
devotes space to other topics, too, and
these help to fill in other details of his
vision of morality and the just society. In
the first part of the volume, for example,
he concentrates on individual—as opposed
to institutional—values and norms, developing
(in "Valuing") an account of the
phenomenon of valuing, and then drawing
on this (in "Morality and Reasonable
Partiality") to argue for an account of morality
that not only accommodates but gives
moral force to reasons deriving from
valued personal projects and relationships.
Meanwhile, in some of the final essays
(particularly "What is Egalitarianism?,"
"Choice, Circumstance, and the Value of
Equality," and "The Good of Toleration"),
he explores neglected questions concerning
not only the justice but the good of a just
society. For Scheffler, such values as equality
and toleration have a grip on us not
merely because they give us a fair framework
within which people can pursue
their diverse conceptions of the good but also because they can unite us: when we
relate to each other as equals, or when we
live together under a regime of toleration,
we may come to experience the rewards
of fraternity. Thus, egalitarian liberalism
may have more to offer than even its advocates
sometimes suppose.

As I hope this short summary makes
clear, Scheffler's vision is an attractive one,
and his arguments for it are compelling.
That alone makes Equality and Tradition
an important contribution to contemporary
political philosophy, even though many of
the essays have been published elsewhere.
It is a bonus that they are also a pleasure
to read. There are philosophers whose writing,
despite its acuity and depth, gives the
impression that the everyday emotions and
experiences of most of their fellow humans
are alien to them. Scheffler's writing is
different: here, acuity and depth are combined
with a sure sense of the nature and
variety of our projects, our concerns, and
our motivations. To judge by Equality and
Tradition, Scheffler is not only a first-rate
philosopher but also a wise one.

—THOMAS PORTER

Thomas Porter is a Lecturer in Political Theory
at the University of Manchester.